Color Mixing & Theory
Colours Can Make Or Break Your Painting!
By Anna Meenaghan
Colours and music, in fact, seem to rule my life, making me also a bit of a colourful character. However, colour features strongly in painting to reflect the mood you are trying to create. The heat within, or even the cold. It certainly makes a difference to your interpretation.
Colour affects us all, in any number of ways and we probably all favour certain colours, which please our senses. Sometimes too, accordingly, you can create the illusion of a feeling of space.
We all try this in our own homes. If you wish to have a calm air about it you would probably choose shades of blue, pale lilac or even green. These, to me, represent a cooler feel to them.
If you want the painting to jump out at you, as it were, well, you need to choose vibrant colours which will intensify your work. Not only will they stir up emotions inside you, but create the feeling of warmth, strong heat in fact. So, to let your emotions go wild, I would use very bright yellows, shades of orange, glorious reds and probably a touch of gold.
Just look at Vlaminck, to clarify this point. If you are feeling blue, it definitely reflects what your mood is at that particular time. These general sayings stick in our minds. As for your work, of course, it helps if you use complementary colours. You can change colours really just by what you put next to one another.
If you like a colour, buy a tube and see if it lives up to your expectations. It is good to have white close to hand as you can build your shades up from this, or just use it for mixing. Bear in mind, some colours are permanent. As for shadows, whites, greys and various shades of brown could be used. You could say that black itself really blocks out colour.
Payne's Grey is a very useful colour to have. This is a paint which has already been mixed. This being a mixture of Mars Black, Ultramarine Blue and Yellow Ochre. As a shade this is very popular, being very versatile. I am sure that many artists would probably mix their own on their palettes. Artists alike find this is particularly good for watercolours.
At the end of the day, colour is very important to the artist. Well, after all, this is how we artists choose to express ourselves.
Colours can be mixed in so many ways. To do this, you need to have a full understanding of the Primary Colours and The Colour Wheel. You can actually buy colour wheels in art shops and suppliers. I can only say that this would be a good investment.
Now we have established our mood swings can be triggered by colours, so if you are feeling sad you would probably choose brown, black, grey, very dark navy or the like. These represent to me miserable colours, depending on your subject of course.
This illustrates shades that would represent a feeling of gloom to your work, although saying this, it would depend then on the use of them. Just one of these colors could be used very effectively with white. So think on, I am really only giving you this as an example to use!
If you would like to read more "How To" guides about painting, then simply visit the online art community of contemporary artist Anna Meenaghan. Anna, the author for this article, is a contemporary painter of many years, great experience and operates a website for artists and art enthusiasts alike. There you can find more articles and also my own art. Comment by Michael Bruckner.
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